Normandy

is it easy to rent a car from LaHavre and drive to the beaches of Normandy? Can you use a USA drivers license?

The distance is 138 km. A prearranged car rental should be easy. You can use your USA licence in Europe. We have done it several times. The only thing to consider is your port time.

DON

If you need an automatic, that can be an issue. Make sure you are getting the type of transmission you want. We drove Normandy out of CDG, and I highly recommend at least 4 days. Make sure you see, in addition to the Normandy sites, the Bayeux Tapestry and Mont St. Michelle. Brittany is also interesting.

is it easy to rent a car from LaHavre and drive to the beaches of Normandy? Can you use a USA drivers license?

I would urge you (or anyone) to skip the rental car and book with "Overlord Tours." (accept NO substitutions or alternates) They have access to private property that no one else gets to see. As a retired US Navy pilot and World War Two history buff, the day spent with them was one of the most incredible and memorable experiences of my life.

I would urge you (or anyone) to skip the rental car and book with "Overlord Tours." (accept NO substitutions or alternates) They have access to private property that no one else gets to see. As a retired US Navy pilot and World War Two history buff, the day spent with them was one of the most incredible and memorable experiences of my life.

I will second that. Do not remember setting foot on private property the day we did a tour with them but we did have an incredible day with an extremely knowledgeable tour guide.

I would urge you (or anyone) to skip the rental car and book with "Overlord Tours." (accept NO substitutions or alternates) They have access to private property that no one else gets to see. As a retired US Navy pilot and World War Two history buff, the day spent with them was one of the most incredible and memorable experiences of my life.

I will second that. Do not remember setting foot on private property the day we did a tour with them but we did have an incredible day with an extremely knowledgeable tour guide.

Another vote for Overlord. Unless you are very familiar with the area and its history, you will spend a lot of time navigating and will likely miss out on much of the information provided by a knowledgeable tour guide.

Enjoy your visit. Normandy will never leave you once you've there.

I concur with the Overlord recommendation. An additional issue with a rental is that one of you has to be paying attention to the driving and can't enjoy the vistas like a passenger in a van. With a tour, everyone can look all around while a guide is doing a much, much better job of explaining what you are seeing than a guidebook or a couple of pages from various websites. All your attention will be focused on the history and scenery.

We chose to rent a car in LeHavre because we wanted to visit the Bayeux Tapestry and could find no tour that would accomplish that. The car rental was easy but I'll warn you about a couple of things.

First, we were all experienced standard transmission drivers but in recent years have only driven an automatic. However, since we would be driving on highways, we decided that it wouldn't be a problem. It wasn't except for the fact that it was impossible to find reverse on that car! DH had to keep fiddling with it until it would magically find reverse. I even bought data for the day on my cell phone so I could search for it - and I found hundreds of questions about "how do I find reverse on this car?" with little helpful information. Renting an automatic will solve that problem but you should reserve it early since most of the cars are standard.

The car rental company will give you lots of information on finding everything you are looking for in the area. The road signs are great and the highways easy to navigate. However, once you get back to LeHavre, you finally appreciate how massive the port area is. We had nothing to tell us how to get pack to the car rental return. It's a huge industrial port with roads leading in different directions and no cruise ship in sight. We were so anxious to get where we were going in the morning, we didn't pay enough attention to where we were coming from. Fortunately, as we were leaving the gas station at the port, a Princess bus drove by so we followed it home.

Whenever we plan a day on our own, we leave a big buffer of time for our return. That day we needed it. It was worth it because the Bayeux Tapestry is stunning but, next time from LeHavre, I'm taking a tour.

I would expect this thread to get moved to the France board, located here:

https://boards.cruisecritic.com/forumdisplay.php?f=593

where there is lots of valuable information.

I also strongly support the Overlord Tours recommendations. Excellent tours and company!!

If you chose to drive, your US driver's licence will be fine in France. Not this is not true of all European countries.

We chose to rent a car in LeHavre because we wanted to visit the Bayeux Tapestry and could find no tour that would accomplish that.

I heartily agree with your assessment of the Bayeux Tapestry (we saw it on a fully day excursion of Bayeux, Omaha Beach and the American Cemetery from a river cruise). I checked Overland Tours (https://www.overlordtour.com/product/tours-from-cruise-ports-9/) and they can structure a tour stopping in Bayeux to see the Tapestry.

OP - I would also check your roll call and see what kinds of tours are already arranged if you decide not to go with a rental car. BTW - welcome to cruise critic!

I highly recommend getting a international driver permit. 50% of the time the car company isn’t going to ask for it. However if it’s the law it could be used against you to void insurance coverage if your in a accident.

I highly recommend getting a international driver permit. 50% of the time the car company isn’t going to ask for it. However if it’s the law it could be used against you to void insurance coverage if your in a accident.

Very true, I had completely forgotten that DH had gotten an international driver permit. He did it at AAA.

I highly recommend getting a international driver permit. 50% of the time the car company isn’t going to ask for it. However if it’s the law it could be used against you to void insurance coverage if your in a accident.

France doesn't require IDPs. And the car company doesn't care if you have it or not (got that direct from a rental company).

I heartily agree with your assessment of the Bayeux Tapestry (we saw it on a fully day excursion of Bayeux, Omaha Beach and the American Cemetery from a river cruise). I checked Overland Tours (https://www.overlordtour.com/product/tours-from-cruise-ports-9/) and they can structure a tour stopping in Bayeux to see the Tapestry.

Yep! We did that for ours. We did the Omaha beaches, then we went to Bayeux. Honestly, our own personal opinion, we didn't care so much about the tapestry. The cathedral there was stunning though! We did run through the tapestry museum, but we were running a little short on time (spent a little too much at a cafe, chatting, LOL!). But we loved our tour!! We had an amazing guide and would highly recommend Overlord Tours!

Bayeux cathedral by Cindy, on Flickr

Sky high ceiling by Cindy, on Flickr

Did anyone visit the museum in Normandy, and if so, did you find it worthwhile? Overlord doesn't include it on their tour, and I'm not sure if we should spend the extra money to personalize a private tour that would include it.

You asking about the Caen Memorial Museum? That is a half day minimum event. We have been there...it is a great Museum. I doubt Overlord or anybody else would want to tie you up there, for that long. There are too many other things to see. For a one day visit, you probably want to see the main landmarks, which with travel time, will eat up your day pretty quick.

We were there on a land tour, and stayed in Bayeaux. Our tour filled the day, and we probably were never more than 25 miles from Bayeaux. We did the Caen Museum the next day, which, coincidentally, rained. Perfect for the Museum.

There is a very nice, small museum at the American Cemetery that is definitely worth a visit.

And there is a small museum at St Marie Eglise...we went there on our Overlord tour, but again, we didn't have the driving involved from Le Havre.

Did anyone visit the museum in Normandy, and if so, did you find it worthwhile? Overlord doesn't include it on their tour, and I'm not sure if we should spend the extra money to personalize a private tour that would include it.

There are dozens of D-Day / Normandy Campaign museums in the area.

The Peace Memorial Museum in Caen, as Bruce's post, is huge - even a half-day there won't do it justice.

But also, it's not a "D-Day museum". D-Day is included en-passant but it majors on the holocaust & other elements.

That's two reasons why it doesn't figure in D-Day tours.

JB :)

Thank you for the information!

Hello All, for the Normandy tour, I really REALLY want to book a private tour with Overlord, but they require full payment when you hold the tour. Which is 980 Euros. Thats a whole lot of money to spend for us, prior to even going. I thought we'd get another 4 people to go with us, so keep it to 6. So then its 326 Euros per couple, but they'd have to pay me up front too. So I'm wondering how you all handled that. (also this is in July of 2019) so $1213 is alot for us to pay this far in advance. I get why they do it, its just not feasible for us right now.

I try not to be on the bus with 50 people if I dont have to.. We tend to move a bit faster than that allows.. I'm in a conundrum for sure :(